I removed this from the applicationContext file and we got a bunch of LazyInstantiation errors. We are running with Spring 2.5.2 version. It seems that we still need this workaround.
<bean
class="org.springframework.transaction.aspectj.AnnotationTransactionAspect"
factory-method="aspectOf" dependency-check="none" lazy-init="false">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
</bean>
